Cecil Beaton Quotes

Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.

Americans have an abiding belief in their ability to control reality by purely material means... airline insurance replaces the fear of death with the comforting prospect of cash.

Perhaps the world's second-worst crime is boredom; the first is being a bore.

More varied than any landscape was the landscape in the sky, with islands of gold and silver, peninsulas of apricot and rose against a background of many shades of turquoise and azure.

On close inspection, this device turned out to be a funereal juke box - the result of mixing Lloyd's of London with the principle of the chewing gum dispenser.

San Francisco is perhaps the most European of all American cities.

The truly fashionable are beyond fashion.

What is elegance? Soap and water!

Never in the history of fashion has so little material been raised so high to reveal so much that needs to be covered so badly.

After twenty annual visits, I am still surprised each time I return to see this giant asparagus bed of alabaster and rose and green skyscrapers.